My guess is that Jebus thought I was going to deny that I said I was Japanese, and without reading what I said, posted this as what he figured would be a "gotcha!" moment.

Even funnier is the fact that the only time the word Japanese is highlighted in the link he sent, was when NonZeroSum talked about the DPRK kidnapping Japanese citizens (an action of the DPRK which I feel it imperative to add that I condemn, despite supporting the country in other areas).

But anyway, thanks again Jebus for giving me another good laugh. Keep it up!

NOTE: If this is your first time to click on this thread, then let me inform you that the majority of this thread is not about abolishing the U.S. Senate. However, I urge you to read the thread in its entirety.

I notice something very sinister in this comment. Jebus, when he wrote this, had no reason to believe that there is anybody else following this thread other than himself, me or Red. I don't think that there is anybody reading the thread other than us three and (now) PsYcHo. If I'm wrong, then you other people can prove that by showing yourselves. However, I think Jebus has accomplished a very successful cop-out where he can avoid responding to my points.

That was very sad and pathetic. Over 5000 people viewed this thread. I think it was the most viewed discussion of the year on this forum.

Please note the words in bold! This is something I have only noticed now but am kicking myself for not noticing earlier. There is a massive difference between actively following a thread and merely viewing it.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that any of the people who viewed this thread other than myself, Red or Jebus are actively following the thread. In fact, there is every reason to believe that none of them are. The title of the thread is "Should the Senate be abolished?". How many people would have clicked on a thread with a title like that wanting to read a discussion about whether the Senate should be abolished? All of them! How many would have kept reading when they realised that the discussion was actually about whether the Presidency should be abolished? And how many would not only have kept reading, but instead of simply skimming through what Jebus, Red and myself wrote, reading the entire four pages worth of it and understanding it? Well, clearly there are two perspectives on this:

What I claim - "There is not a single person who was actively following this thread and had a good enough understanding of the points made by Jebus, Red and myself, other than Jebus, Red and myself. That is why nobody responded to Jebus's original comment."

What Jebus claims (If he feels I am misrepresenting him, he is free to say so) - "A sizeable chunk of the people who viewed this thread are actively following it. The reason nobody responded to my original comment is because they all agree with me."

Now, neither of these views have any evidence for them. However, this does not mean that they are equally likely to be true. There is a simple way to tell whether a viewpoint is likely to be false or not:

Falsifiability
I am sure that most people on this forum are familiar with Karl Popper's falsification principle. However, for those who are not, it is that if somebody is articulating an unevidenced point of view, we should discard it if that same person cannot articulate what would conclusively prove that viewpoint false for them.

For example, if I was to state "Jebus drinks bathwater", there is no feasible way to actually disprove this statement. However, if Jebus was to state that he does not drink bathwater, he could articulate what would disprove that. For instance, video footage of him drinking bathwater. Therefore, we can conclude that Jebus does not drink bathwater.

Now, I do not believe that there is a single person who was actively following this thread and had a good enough understanding of the points made by Jebus, Red and myself, other than Jebus, Red and myself. I have already articulated what would falsify this for me:

If I'm wrong, then you other people can prove that by showing yourselves.

I maintain this. If there is anybody who is actively following this thread other than Red, Jebus or myself, then prove it. Show yourself. I am almost certain I will not get any responses from people actively following this thread, for the same reason I didn't get any responses before, and for the same reason Jebus did not get any responses: Because Red, Jebus and myself are the only people actively following this thread.

If Jebus wishes to respond to this post, he only needs to answer one question: What would disprove your implication that a large amount of people are actively following this thread?

Why I think that those who viewed this thread are not actively following it
I think that this thread has such a large view count due to its title. Many people are intrigued to discuss whether the U.S. Senate should be abolished. However, when they find that the majority of what is discussed here is whether the U.S. Presidency should be abolished, they would leave due to it not being the topic of discussion advertised.

This question is not only irrelevant, but any response is likely to distract from the question posed.

The question is: Is there any correlation between any musical preference and intelligence/gender?

This is from the thread "Correlation between musical preference and intelligence/gender". Now, that thread currently has 652 views. Around 600 people clicked on that thread expecting a discussion about musical preferences between differing genders and levels of intelligence and that is what they got. But what if Jebus did not intervene? What if he instead talked about his musical preferences, and myself and Red joined in the thread to talk about out musical preferences, and we all had a lovely natter about music? How many of those est. 600 would have stuck around? It's reasonable to assume not very many.

In fact, Jebus himself understands how the title alone can determine the fate of threads. He has been on the receiving end of this in the past. A while back, after the election of Emmanuel Macron as President of France, I created a thread entitled "Macron wins! What now for France?" in which I expressed my belief that Macron should make Benoit Hamon the Prime Minister of France. @brimstoneSalad asked about Hamon's policies, and I talked about the stuff he supports that I support (socialism, legal euthanasia, legal cannabis, etc.). BrimstoneSalad responded to this asking what bad stuff Hamon is advocating for. At this point, Jebus added this insight:

Zero empathy for animals. He has already said that he will always take the side of hunters and breeders over animal rights activists. Brigitte Bardot urged voters to vote Le Pen in order to save animals.

I was very surprised at this. However, on further questioning, it was revealed that Jebus was talking about Macron, not Hamon. When his attention was called to the fact that brimstoneSalad and I were discussing Hamon, this was his precious response:

I could never have guessed how handy those five words would come to me in a year's time. Jebus himself only skimmed through the thread he was reading, and assumed that the person discussed was the person in the title, and yet he expects us to believe that there are people who clicked on this thread, continued reading when it wasn't about the subject discussed, read and understood all the points made by Red, Jebus and myself, saw his comment stating that he would respond to the points I made if somebody other than Red thought that they were good, didn't respond because they didn't think that any of the points I made were good, and yet didn't bring this to my attention when I made my comment asking them to show themselves and didn't even make a single comment in this thread in Jebus's favour!

Is Jebus actually that stupid?
The answer is no. He knew very well that nobody would respond to his comment, hence the exclusion of myself and Red, the only two people who he knew for sure disagreed with him and are actively following the thread, from being able to raise the points I made to him. From what I have seen so far from his behaviour in this thread, he is very concerned about losing this debate, hence not responding to points made by myself and Red because we are "morons" and our comments are "repetitive and senseless".

Why is he so concerned about losing this debate? I think these comment of his reveal a lot:

WTF are you on about. I never blocked anyone. I just hope you become discouraged to engage in intellectual debate and instead stick to what you do best, i.e. pro North Korea, pro Kim Jung Un and other troll posts.

Jebus can not comprehend somebody who is potentially unskilled at debating willingly participating in a debate that they could lose in. This is because in his view, debates must be about proving the opposition wrong, rather than discussing ideas in a civilised manner and drawing from others' viewpoints. And of course, if somebody is wrong, they must be stupid:

There is still a chance that someone as idiotic as you and Red would question me on my comments. I'm actually surprised that no one has yet challenged me. When I wrote it I was almost certain some other moron would jump in.

Accoding to him, anybody who questions him on his comments must be an idiotic moron! According to Jebus, his viewpoint that the U.S. should abolish the presidency, is the right one, and therefore anybody who disagrees must be stupid. If points are made which go against the viewpoint that the U.S. should abolish the presidency, and undermine his entire argument, he can not concede and admit defeat, because in his eyes, this would make him stupid because he was wrong about something.

Why do you think its funny when someone you perceive as a conspirator calls you "sad and pathetic"? Anger, frustration or sense of inferiority would be a more expected response.

Why does he think anger, frustration or sense of inferiority would be a more expected response? Because that is what he feels when somebody describes him or something he says in that manner. It is a threat to this identity he has made for himself of a brilliant intellectual who takes down idiots in debate masterfully. This identity is clearly very fragile, so much so that mere comments from people on the internet are enough to provoke feelings of inferiority in him. I think the fact that he views anger, frustration and a sense of inferiority as a normal reaction to remarks made by people on the internet is enough to show that he needs to seek help.

My advice to Jebus would be to talk to a psychiatrist about these feelings of anger, frustration and inferiority. Having those feelings provoked by such minor things is not normal. He should also explain that he has trouble accepting that he is wrong about things and that he believes people are idiots simply for disagreeing with him. Once he has done that, I hope he will have the strength to be able to either concede defeat or to continue the debate in a civilised manner.

Conclusion
I will reiterate: I do not believe that there is any person other than Red, Jebus or myself who has read this thread in its entirety. However, if this post leads to somebody doing just that, I will consider it a success. Even if that person thinks that I am an idiot and sides with Jebus, I will still consider it a success. This is because Jebus understands that the only people who click on this thread other than him, Red or me are those expecting it to be about the U.S. Senate, and so nobody else will be able to add another perspective. If this post changes that, I will consider it a success.

I debated with myself whether I ought to have made this post in the first place. Jebus had stopped responding. I could have just left it at my final remark. However, for the reasons I outlined, I saw it as necessary to make this post. Jebus, when talking about the number of people who viewed the thread (which it is already very generous to assume reaches the number he claims it does) as if it is the same as the number of people actively following it is the sort of hogwash which he does not want people calling him out on. I aim to stop this. I also didn't know whether I ought to put the bit exploring the potential motives for why Jebus did this, however, he has made a great deal of ridiculous, baseless assertions about me, and if he wants to tell lies about me, I'll gladly tell the truth about him.

One final thing I shall draw attention to is when I said that Red had told me that Jebus blocked me and that I suspected Jebus was lying when he claimed not to have. Well, it seems I was wrong. Red guessed that Jebus had blocked me and wanted to brag that he had the power to check due to him being a demimod, when in fact being a demimod gave him no such power. So, Jebus, I wholeheartedly and unreservedly apologise for that. You behave like an asshole and use dirty tricks in debating, however, you didn't block me and then lie about it. As for Red, I think that lying as he did was a very foolish move. In most occasions, nothing good will come of lying and the truth will come out. I urge him to think long and hard about the consequences of his actions. He must not stoop to lying as a form of bragging in the future. I know that he is better than that.

I'm going to get some sleep now. This has been a long post. Probably the longest post I've made outside of the Fun Forum. And it isn't even really about philosophy or politics! I'm just trying to expose somebody's bullshit. Ain't that tragic? I honestly don't know why I bother. I've never met Jebus in real life. Besides chatting shit, he hasn't done much to inconvenience me. When I lie on my deathbed, I doubt he'll even figure in my head. However, I have to wait until December for the next episode of The Good Place, so I haven't really got anything more enjoyable to be doing right now. Eh, I guess there are always plenty of films. As a matter of fact, while writing this, I took a break to watch The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which I very much enjoyed. If anybody's got any other film recommendations, they're very welcome to write them in this thread. We've already deviated a great deal from the original subject.

There might have been a few lurkers who have read everything, but most people have probably skimmed or only read the first few posts.

What claim are we talking about? The U.S. shouldn't have a president?

The U.S. really needs more representative democracy along with a second choice voting system or something along those lines. I don't think that's as controversial.

It may or may not be true that the presidency should be abolished period. There's no real way to know the effect of that, so it's a more controversial claim. I don't know if anybody would post just to say they don't agree without an argument, because it's hard to make any argument about that since we just don't know.

The president's power probably needs to be more limited, since it's been expanded quite a bit by bad precedent. That's not a very controversial claim, and I think that's easier to support.

In terms of abolition of the presidency, there are psychological benefits to having a figurehead and it gets people more interested in politics and makes accountability simpler (of course presidents get blamed for a lot of things they didn't do as well). There's a good argument that the president should be a bit less functional and more symbolic, but abolition could be a bad idea for those reasons.

Also keep in mind that without an elected commander in chief that doesn't mean that the power wouldn't effectively still be concentrated in one person, that person would just end up being some un-elected military commander nobody knows the name of and who would act essentially with impunity hiding from public accountability and with any number of fall guys shielding his or herself from legal accountability.
That's not necessarily better, and could be worse.

I'm hesitant to recommend large and controversial changes due to the possibility of unintended consequences.
More direct democracy is an easy one. Limiting presidential overreach is easy too. But abolition might not be a good idea.

It may or may not be true that the presidency should be abolished period. There's no real way to know the effect of that, so it's a more controversial claim. I don't know if anybody would post just to say they don't agree without an argument, because it's hard to make any argument about that since we just don't know.

That's what I inquired Jebus about, but he remains fervent in his believe that the Presidency (and all types of Executive Government) should be abolished, but he really hasn't provided any strong evidence other than some examples of the Presidency leading to bad things (which isn't really evidence, as it can be improved. Should we be killing meat eaters or should we give them a chance to go vegan or even vegetarian?). I haven't really been saying Jebus is wrong (although I obviously disagree with what he's saying) but it doesn't really seem as though he has any reasoning for many of his claims, which I inquired him about.

The president's power probably needs to be more limited, since it's been expanded quite a bit by bad precedent. That's not a very controversial claim, and I think that's easier to support.

I don't disagree with that in principle (the Congress was originally meant to be the most powerful branch, but it's hard to effectively evaluate who's the most powerful with all the expansions of power by all three branches), but we'd need strong evidence to determine how much power each branch should have, and the types of powers they should have (keep in mind, Jebus isn't calling for it to be weakened, just flat out abolished).

Yes, I told you to fuck off and then I deleted it because I decided to play the victim game. I also went to the trouble of buying photoshop in order to fake this screenshot of a conversation between myself and Red on a discord server.

The reason I did this was because Red and I are members of the Illuminati and your criticisms of the U.S. Presidency are a threat to our conspiracy to take over the world.

It seems we are going to have to find some other way of silencing you. Mwahaha... mwahahahahaa... ahahahahahahaha!!!!

I've just noticed now that the screenshot I've posted in this thread has (at time of writing) 1021 views. This shows that @Jebus can't boast at all about "over 5000" people viewing this thread, as clearly 4000 of those 5000 people didn't go beyond the first two pages.